His recordings seem to avoid much of the dynamic compression that I've heard in others, and he obviously has credibility as an artist, but I cannot figure out what he is specifically advocating in what is reported as "High Resolution Audio" (caps in articles). I googled and could not find anything more specific than a brief article in the WSJ http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/01/31/...oogle_news_blog (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2012/01/31/neil-young-defends-both-record-companies-and-piracy/?mod=google_news_blog)
Is Young backing a specific codec and resolution, or is he generally just calling for more than what seems most common today? Anyone with any insight on more details on what specific problems he wants to solve and any specifics of his proposed solution?
here's video that the WSJ summation was taken from:
http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-youngs...-mission-video/ (http://allthingsd.com/20120131/neil-youngs-music-rescue-mission-video/)
I can't speak for Young, but I have some assumptions.
He wants the labels to provide (at least) Redbook-resolution downloads, and preferably 24/96 resolution, for a start.
Of course, to do this, the major labels would have to offer FLAC files-- and the majors hate FLAC. They consider it the format of pirates and bootleggers. It's probably why you can't play FLAC on iTunes software (without a hack/add-on).
Neil offered some higher-res files on the Blu-ray version of his first Archives volume. Unfortunately you couldn't convert those files to play anywhere other than the Blu-ray media without, again, a lot of steps, most outside the skills of the average music fan. So the hi-res tracks weren't what you could call portable.
Young's trying to raise awareness that there's demand for higher res, and trying to goad the labels and Silicon Valley into talking to each other to make this sort of thing available.
Here's some more background on Young's crusade:
http://blogs.linn.co.uk/giladt/2011/08/lis...-neil-young.php (http://blogs.linn.co.uk/giladt/2011/08/listening-to-the-harvest-studio-master-with-neil-young.php)
the following page had a YouTube video showing one of Neil's vintage cars backstage at (I think) Boneroo, with all sorts of rockstars sitting in it listening to high-res. That video has since been taken down, and all content on the Facebook "Occupy Audio" page has been removed. I think you can still "like" the page, though. Who knows. Something new might show up.
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyAudio (https://www.facebook.com/OccupyAudio)
You can of cause just get the impression he only wants to sell all his music once again. First he sold Vinyl then CD, followed by DVD releases and now once more as HiRes download.
I'm sure Neil Young has heard some really good live music and some really good recordings played-back on really nice equipment.
But, what are the odds that he's ever done a blind ABX test? Or, any critical listening tests? I wonder if he knows the difference between file compression and dynamic compression. I wonder how his ears are holding-out...
He begins by mentioning recording at 24/192 and calling that "100% of the sound". The file format/codec is incidental to his argument and he doesn't mention one, although he's certainly talking about lossless.
I watched the video. What I saw before me was an old man who does not understand technology, babbling about percentages and so forth in a world where the state of the art has advanced to the point where percentages are largely meaningless. He directly equates bit rate with quality, which only demonstrates a tragic misunderstanding of the applicable tehnology. He does, at least, have a sensible view on piracy.
I have no quarrel with better-quality downloads, but it's rather disingenuous to refer to an MP3 as only retaining 5% of the original quality of a recording.
Of course, to do this, the major labels would have to offer FLAC files-- and the majors hate FLAC. They consider it the format of pirates and bootleggers. It's probably why you can't play FLAC on iTunes software (without a hack/add-on).
FLAC, even higher bitdepth and bitrate, is available from HDTracks.com. They have a lot of major label content, so I think the majors are not unwilling, for a price.
Apple doesn't do FLAC because it's an open standard. Their users could more easily slip their moorings.
ALAC is now an open standard.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=91530 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=91530)
ALAC is now an open standard.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=91530 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=91530)
Yup, exactly that is what JimH critizises. Flac is well known, wide spread and as good as a lossless format can get. Now Apple tries to spread its useless ALAC code while doing nothing to simply provide support for flac.
What I saw before me was an old man who does not understand technology, babbling about percentages and so forth in a world where the state of the art has advanced to the point where percentages are largely meaningless.
I have seen before me a lot of young idiots babbling about the influences of audio cables, the audio qualities of a capacitor or the effect of a cryogenically treated receptacle. Idiocies are not age related, neither is the understanding or not of technology. I am fucking 62 years old and put together my own music server with installing all the necessary hardware and software to get it to run.
So, stop your fucking age references, old doesn't mean stupid, neither does being young mean being smart. The criminal stats proof otherwise.
ALAC is now an open standard.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=91530 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=91530)
Yup, exactly that is what JimH critizises. Flac is well known, wide spread and as good as a lossless format can get. Now Apple tries to spread its useless ALAC code while doing nothing to simply provide support for flac.
What makes ALAC useless? I seem to have many uses for it, I'm sure other do to especially people with Apple hardware. Lossless is lossless does it really matter what the file extension is?
For me and many others ALAC is useless because it is one of the worst lossless codecs around. My answer was more meant to JimHs point. If the apple universe would have added support for flac it won´t be so hard for lossless codecs to be available in the music download market.
Seems like you have a personal gripe with Apple.
If the apple universe would have added support for flac it won´t be so hard for lossless codecs to be available in the music download market.
What's your reasoning behind that conjecture?
Apple pretty much created the music download market and still controls the lions share. They've had ALAC available to them since about 2004 but have chosen not to make lossless downloads available. I don't see how adopting FLAC would have changed that.
If the rest of the world offers flac for download and apple still doesn´t support it, don´t you think it is because they want to keep their itunes in their own format? Only making it harder for their users to use other platforms like HDtracks? Once used to use itines you will have a hard time adding your flac download to your library so you better leave it alone. I think this is one strong marketing point.
Idiocies are not age related, neither is the understanding or not of technology. So, stop your fucking age references
I never said they were age-related. I suggest you calm yourself.
For me and many others ALAC is useless because it is one of the worst lossless codecs around.
That's only the case if you disregard a good percentage of lossless codecs which are quite a bit worse than ALAC with respect to compression ratio, encoding speed and decoding speed. Apple Lossless is very much a middle-of-the-pack technology as far as lossless is encoding is concerned: neither near the front nor near the back of the pack.
At least the last poll shows that only 6% of Hydrogen voters use it. For flac it is above 65%. I wonder if these 6% mostly use it simply because it is part of their OS enviroment.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=92660 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=92660)
limahuli, thanks for the links - those were helpful in understanding more what Neil Young is thinking. I cringed like I'm sure many did when he made is 5% statement, but in the overall context I think that (over)simplification is not the essence of his point of view. His donkey imagery gives me hope he gets it at some level that there are many steps in the production, delivery and playback chain that are involved in communicating the artists' original intentions to the end user. I really liked his comment about (concept) albums versus tracks. At a more basic level, I've found myself struggling to tag tracks with a "5" (my favorites) and how those reflect my favorite albums, and I've found that many of my favorite albums are missing because the impact of the tracks on such albums do not resonate with me as ad-hoc singles but only when played as an entire album. I've toyed with creating an album rating tag for my use and have a playlist of favorite albums distinct from my favorite tracks.
The essence of his points seem to be:
- poor quality is not required for convenience
- gotta pay attention to many elements in translating the artists' original intent all the way through to delivery (his donkey image) (although he may in fact believe the key is in going to 24/192k since this was the only specific item he mentioned, but I hope not)
- gotta get a "rich guy" on board (I think this means he wants market makers to step up to lead change)
- need more attention to fulfilling the artists' original intent in what is offered to consumers (album versus track purchases seem to be some or a big part of this)
I also found the comments regarding Steve Jobs intriguing. The vinyl comment has merit to me if it's a reflection that rock recordings before the Loudness Wars can have significantly better dynamic range, but we can only guess at this point concerning Steve Jobs' views on that. I also was intrigued by the tidbit that Jobs was surprised at the degree to which consumers had traded quality for convenience.
If anything Neil Young does results in an end to the Loudness Wars and an improved focus by content distributors and equipment manufacturers on convenient truly high quality playback, then I'll accept a gratuitous increase in sampling rate and bit depth and buy bigger hard drives. If he's just or mainly about 24/192k, meh.
I didn't take any part of his conversation to be about dynamic compression or loudness wars. Merely that he was upset about consumers having few other choices of download beyond lossy encoded files.
You're right, nothing directly mentioned in the video linked above. But my hope springs eternal.
I watched the video. What I saw before me was an old man who does not understand technology, babbling about percentages and so forth in a world where the state of the art has advanced to the point where percentages are largely meaningless. He directly equates bit rate with quality, which only demonstrates a tragic misunderstanding of the applicable tehnology. He does, at least, have a sensible view on piracy.
I have no quarrel with better-quality downloads, but it's rather disingenuous to refer to an MP3 as only retaining 5% of the original quality of a recording.
Yep. That's my view, also.
Flac is well known, wide spread and as good as a lossless format can get.
I think that last part is probably overstating it.
It's probably why you can't play FLAC on iTunes software (without a hack/add-on)
FLAC isn't supported in iTunes (and others) because it competes with their own lossless codec. The industry simply does not like lossless because bandwidth costs them money. They dislike it for the same reason that they dislike CDs, because it's something tangible that cuts into their profits. Also because they could care less about you needing to convert to other formats and having generational loss of quality. They care about immediate quality, and to the world, MP3 is good enough because it takes a few seconds to download, versus a few minutes for lossless. Society is 100% about instant gratification.
It's probably why you can't play FLAC on iTunes software (without a hack/add-on)
FLAC isn't supported in iTunes (and others) because it competes with their own lossless codec. The industry simply does not like lossless because bandwidth costs them money. They dislike it for the same reason that they dislike CDs, because it's something tangible that cuts into their profits. Also because they could care less about you needing to convert to other formats and having generational loss of quality. They care about immediate quality, and to the world, MP3 is good enough because it takes a few seconds to download, versus a few minutes for lossless. Society is 100% about instant gratification.
Or, perhaps the demand for CDs and FLAC (or lossless in general) just isn't there..
I also caught that article and was wondering if discussion on it would show up here. I'm a big fan of Neil but the 5% argument among others did seem pretty out there and I was also thinking he would be a great candidate for an invite to do ABX testing to see what comes out of it.
I know Neil has raved about Blu Ray as a delivery format, expressing his displeasure with CD quality. I think that was one of the things about his archive series, he supposedly spent a lot of time getting it all ready for us to enjoy and the high resolution was a large part of that.
A ways back I did try the 24/192k thing out on my PC for the heck of it by comparing some of the content from his archive series to the regular CD releases of the same songs. While not an ABX test, it did sound fairly different to me (or course I could be imagining it). But different in the remastered kind of way, as in I could hear some aspects of instruments things I couldn't hear in the CD release which in any kind of logical thinking I couldn't pin down to content above 20 kHz. So that didn't prove anything to me and I rely on the wisdom of actual ABX test results between CD and higher resolution I have seen here as I didn't care enough to bother more. Maybe Neil just spent more time being involved in the mixes of the high resolution material this time, and maybe that's part of what he is getting at about ensuring quality until the end of delivery.
I do agree with him wanting to bring the quality up though. For me, I would NEVER buy music delivered to me in a lossy format, and it bothers me that it is the only way I can buy most music online. I've had an iTunes gift card sitting here unused for years as I can't bring myself to buy lossy music. Don't get me wrong, I'm fine listening to lossy music, but I will not buy it, in fear that some small part of it might contain a problem section, or that I will lose more in a trans-code to a format I actually want to use. If I am paying money for music, I wan't the 100% quality, and in that, I can agree with Neil completely.
I still feel like there is room for quality improvements in the recording and reproduction of audio in general too. Listening to a recording on a stereo still feels like it is losing something over being at a live performance. Quite frankly when I think of the mechanics of microphones and speakers I'm amazed things sound as good as they even do.
Or, perhaps the demand for CDs and FLAC (or lossless in general) just isn't there..
I think it's all about control and greed. Music is art, and art doesn't really deserve to be industrialized at all, especially to the point it has been. The execs are the ones reaping all of the benefits. Let the artists control everything including the freedom to deliver in whatever format they want. In this day and age of everyone being connected, the artists don't need representation to get their material out there. So in a nutshell, the industry knew it was getting to be obsolete and then lobbied to become a superpower of control, and now they are just a monopolistic dinosaur with their tentacles all over everything. People really don't deserve to be jailed for downloading music or movies they can't afford. Get rid of the industry, and the music could cost like a dollar for an album while the artists are pulling in the same money they do now, but with freedom.
A ways back I did try the 24/192k thing out on my PC for the heck of it by comparing some of the content from his archive series to the regular CD releases of the same songs. While not an ABX test, it did sound fairly different to me (or course I could be imagining it). But different in the remastered kind of way,
The original CD masters weren't used for those archive series releases. They were totally remastered by Chris Bellman in 2009. So the comparison you made was between apples and oranges.
FLAC isn't supported in iTunes (and others) because it competes with their own lossless codec. The industry simply does not like lossless because bandwidth costs them money. They dislike it for the same reason that they dislike CDs, because it's something tangible that cuts into their profits. Also because they could care less about you needing to convert to other formats and having generational loss of quality. They care about immediate quality, and to the world, MP3 is good enough because it takes a few seconds to download, versus a few minutes for lossless. Society is 100% about instant gratification.
Maybe somewhat unrelated, but the movie industry sure is holding on to their expensive DVDs and Blu-Rays for dear life, and the only way you can get a movie online from them is if you buy a disc first!
I just don't get it.
Or, perhaps the demand for CDs and FLAC (or lossless in general) just isn't there..
I think it's all about control and greed. Music is art, and art doesn't really deserve to be industrialized at all, especially to the point it has been. The execs are the ones reaping all of the benefits. Let the artists control everything including the freedom to deliver in whatever format they want. In this day and age of everyone being connected, the artists don't need representation to get their material out there. So in a nutshell, the industry knew it was getting to be obsolete and then lobbied to become a superpower of control, and now they are just a monopolistic dinosaur with their tentacles all over everything. People really don't deserve to be jailed for downloading music or movies they can't afford. Get rid of the industry, and the music could cost like a dollar for an album while the artists are pulling in the same money they do now, but with freedom.
That's not quite right. If the labels truly were superfluous or obsolete then they wouldn't exist.. It's still very important for artists to have a strong label behind them for various reasons.
That's not quite right. If the labels truly were superfluous or obsolete then they wouldn't exist.. It's still very important for artists to have a strong label behind them for various reasons.
It is right. They have the power of lobby, and have the power to control what music society is exposed most to. If an artist chooses not to be represented by a label, they simply never make it. It is a much more complex issues than I care to get more into, but they are totally obsolete, and when iron giants become obsolete, they lobby to gain power and influence to stomp out any competition.
They have the power of lobby, and have the power to control what music society is exposed most to. If an artist chooses not to be represented by a label, they simply never make it.
I'm not sure about that. Either the labels promote artists and therefore do useful work (however arbitrary their choices of whom to promote), or they don't. If they're not needed, then artists would presumably be promoting themselves quite successfully on the internet, with community groups doing the filtering and promotion that the labels do at the moment. Internet fame is truly possible: all over the world, people watch videos of a Japanese cat called Maru, partly because the cat is fascinating, but mostly because the videos are quite beautifully made, and so they stand out from all the other cat videos. I don't know of any musicians who've achieved a similar fame through the net, though they may be there.
The labels are ugly, indeed, and have far too much power in the world: but that doesn't mean that the basic distribution and publicity they do is unnecessary.
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I don't know of any musicians who've achieved a similar fame through the net, though they may be there.
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A lot of the music I get these days are not from any heavily promoted "superstar" artists but they probably make a decent living. Maybe more musicians making decent livings from smaller audiences is something the internet can make happen better than the big labels.
Um, Justin Beiber?
Or, on an actually good note, Pomplamoose (http://www.youtube.com/user/pomplamoosemusic). Although, they don't seem to achieve mainstream status, they've done very good for themselves on youtube and iTunes.
Also, lesser known bands have become hugely popular mainly through their videos like OK Go, for instance. Youtube is the new, free, democratic MTV.
And not only music, I would never have become a fan (well maybe eventually) of the Daily Show if it weren't for all the youtube sharing back in the day.
It's good, then, that people are making a decent living without the labels. My doubt was really about the extent to which apparent net success was really independent--I think Lily Allen got a lot of exposure on YouTube, but that was supposed to be a carefully planned "viral" marketing campaign.